Proposed Sale of Water Creates Divisions in Desert

BRAWLEY, Calif. -- Long before the sun crests the Chocolate Mountains, the Imperial Valley zanjeros are setting the water gates on the 1,675 miles of canals that are the arteries of this desert farming oasis at the southernmost fringe of California.

Even today, a century after the original settlers subdued the land and planted the first winter vegetables here, the valley’s diminishing clan of Anglo farmers still rises to meet the irrigation district zanjeros, or ditch riders, on the canal banks.

“Most farmers want to make sure they’re getting the water they ordered,” said John Pierre Menvielle, a third-generation vegetable and hay grower. But more than that, said the raspy-voiced Menvielle, the dawn encounters on the canal banks are a link with the past and an affirmation of a way of life in one of the country’s most productive agricultural areas, known as America’s “Winter Salad Bowl.”

Steeped in agrarian traditions, this desert valley is about to give up a large share of its most precious commodity in a water deal that will make some people rich, cost others jobs, and return some fields to the dunes and dust from which they emerged. The prospect has created sharp divisions in a society that was once proudly united in a battle to make the desert bloom.

There are ethnic overtones to the tensions. Many of the biggest farmers hope to secure a windfall from the water transfer, while Mexican American leaders worry about the displacement of farm workers. They argue that the transfer should not be approved unless profits from the water sale are invested in the community.

Yet, as residents’ leaders wrangle over the future, their beloved image of a bucolic valley is belied by multiplying trade connections with Mexico and the arrival of speculators whose interests lie more with the market value of water than in maintaining a traditional way of life.

The number of farming families has declined from more than 2,000 in the 1970s to fewer than 400 today. More than half of the valley’s agricultural land is held by absentee owners.

Under an agreement reached this week by key California water agencies, billions of gallons of Colorado River water would be shifted annually from Imperial Valley farms to urban San Diego County. The agreement is the state’s best hope of avoiding a federal cutback of its ration of Colorado River water.

Still, there is no guarantee that the Imperial Irrigation District will approve the transfer. Its members are split on the issue, which will be discussed Tuesday at a board meeting in El Centro.

Imperial County is feeling mounting pressure from Sacramento and Washington to approve the transfer by the end of the year. Without it, California could face an abrupt reduction in the surplus delivery from the Colorado River it has been receiving for 29 years but to which it is not legally entitled. Imperial Valley farms get most of the water -- about one-fifth of the river’s total flow -- that California takes.

If the transfer is approved, it will be the first time in history that the proud farmers here agreed to idle land to make water available for California coastal cities. “Fallowing” used to be the “f” word here and is still an obscenity to many people.

Since the Imperial Valley was settled in the early 1900s, its farmers have staved off one threat after another to their way of life: canals hopelessly clogged with silt, encroachment by hyperactive hydrilla water plants and a U.S. Supreme Court battle that threatened to break up their family lands.

They retaliated with back-breaking work, savvy lawyers and sterile carp to eat the hydrilla. To this day, a handful of prosperous Anglo farmers and businessmen control the civic and political institutions in an area with a majority Latino population and more people living below the poverty line than any other county in the state.

Now, for many here, the fallowing challenge is the greatest test of all.

Speaking at a recent town hall meeting to discuss the San Diego water transfer, Brawley entomologist Clyde Shields fought back tears as he expressed his fears for the valley where his family has lived since his grandfather settled here in 1928.

“If the IID [Imperial Irrigation District] allows fallowing,” said Shields, pausing to collect himself, “before long there will be more fallowing and the Imperial Valley will be dried up.”

In the back of many minds is the specter of water transfers gone bad, such as the one that turned the green Owens Valley into a dustbowl so that Los Angeles could have water.

But Shields’ lament, received in gloomy silence in the Hidalgo Society Hall here, was for an Imperial Valley that in many ways no longer exists.

For all its traditions -- morning encounters on the canals, family gatherings at the Stockmen’s Club, gripe sessions at Brunner’s Coffee Shop in El Centro, rodeos and high school sports rivalries -- the Imperial Valley is in a state of transition.

Many of the farmers are now college-educated agri-businessmen with homes on the coast and land holdings in Mexico. Some are no longer farmers at all but water speculators who have made a long “play” on exactly what is happening: the lucrative conversion of irrigation water.

According to the terms of the pending agreement, they would be paid up to $400 a cubic acre for water that cost them just $15.50.

Moreover, the region has benefited from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has turned the sleepy border city of Calexico into a dynamic goods distribution center, clearly the most economically vital place in the valley.

A broad new high-tech border crossing outside Calexico eases the way for trucks carrying tomatoes, asparagus and other labor-intensive crops from Mexico right through the Imperial Valley on their way north to Los Angeles.

More than 100 maquiladoras (border factories) in the booming Mexican sister city produce goods for foreign managers, many of whom live in the Imperial Valley.

The United Food and Commercial Workers and Teamsters unions have successfully organized the Brawley Beef packing plant where 725 ex-farm workers toil for pay well above the minimum-wage field work and receive full benefits.

The Mexican American population now accounts for more than 75% of the county’s 140,000 residents. The children of people who aspired no higher than zanjero now compete for a majority on the irrigation district board.

“My goal in life, and I will die happy when it happens,” said political activist Daniel Santillan of Calexico, “is to have three Hispanics [out of five members] on the county Board of Supervisors and the board of the Imperial Irrigation District.”

Anglo politicians complain that you can’t get elected without a Latino surname.

Social tension was evident at the town hall meeting earlier this month.

As they portrayed a valley under siege by thirsty urbanites, several speakers adopted a reverent tone, alternating righteous indignation with David vs. Goliath imagery,

A sign at Imperial Irrigation District headquarters says it all: “Water is King, and Here Is Its Kingdom.”

“Last year, we celebrated 100 years of bringing water to this valley,” Andy Horne, a member of the irrigation district board, told the crowd. “We were the pioneers. Hoover Dam was build at the insistence of the Imperial Valley.”

“But times have changed under pressure from the 17 million people on the coast,” Horne said. “Now we are considered the deep pockets when it comes to water.”

The meeting broke up inconclusively. No vote was taken on the San Diego water transfer, but there was a palpable sense of resignation. The general feeling seemed to be that no matter what was said, the valley was destined to change in unpredictable, discomforting directions.

Anyone who has crossed the Coastal Range on Interstate 8 from San Diego is struck by the emerald-green carpet of farm land spread incongruously on the desert floor.

There are thick groves of date palms that would seem at home in southern Iraq or an oasis on the Arabian peninsula. The image of the Imperial Valley as a hardscrabble land of rugged settlers who endured ferocious heat and countless calamities to tame the desert was already established by the early part of the last century.

A 1911 novel by popular writer Harold Bell Wright, “The Winning of Barbara Worth,” was set here and described the hardships faced by the pioneers. The moralistic book, subtitled “The Ministry of Capitalism,” sold nearly 2 million copies and was a schoolboy favorite of Ronald Reagan during his Midwestern childhood.

It was later produced as a popular play and a 1927 silent movie, the first screen appearance for Gary Cooper.

But farming in the valley, as well as the politics, has changed radically.

Over lunch at the Stockmen’s Club in Brawley, Earle Sperber, the owner of Sperber Farms, described how some lettuce growers made $1 million last year for each 75 acres they planted in the crop. Proposing an aerial tour of the valley to a pair of visitors, Sperber offered the use of his own airplane.

Although most farmers live modestly in the valley, a few also maintain more ostentatious digs on the coast, including homes in Newport Beach and La Jolla.

Meanwhile, speculators hoping to cash in on the huge price differential between the cost of valley water and its potential sale price have laid claim several large farms.

The biggest is US Filter, a subsidiary of French conglomerate Vivendi Environment. US Filter owns 42,000 acres of valley farmland, about 10% of the total under irrigation.

US Filter bought the Western Farm holdings from the Fort Worth-based Bass family for $200 million in 1997 after the Texas family failed in its attempts to sell water directly to the San Diego Water District.

Steve Stanczak, US Filter vice president and general counsel, said the company’s moment may have arrived.

“Today there is so much pressure on the Imperial Valley from so many different constituencies, including the Department of Interior and neighboring water district, that they are between a rock and a hard place.”

Complicating matters are significant splits in the farming community.

“The farmers themselves are very divided,” agreed labor union consultant John Kennedy, who has spent much of the past five years in the valley working with the United Food and Commercial Workers and Teamsters unions to successfully organize the 725 employees at the Brawley Beef plant.

“There is one group that feels that water is a commodity that is their right to sell,” Kennedy said. “There is another group that feels an almost spiritual bond with the land and that they are engaged in the noble occupation of feeding the world.”

Some of the larger landowners who believe they should be able to profit from selling water have grown impatient with the irrigation district and formed the Imperial Valley Water Users Assn., which now claims to represent about half the valley’s farmers.

Looming in the background is the increasing sentiment that any money that comes into the valley for water should be shared by all the residents.

“Look,” said Santillan, the Calexico community organizer whose family came here from Mexico in 1918, “the big water reclamation projects that created the valley were built with taxpayers’ money. So I figure any money made from the water belongs to everyone.”